Tag Archives: short story

Scissors

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His mother always cut his hair. From the time he was very, very little to now, when he was a determined and energetic six year old who would fight dragons in the back yard with a wooden sword crafted by his father.

But his father was gone now, and James didn’t understand. He didn’t understand the yelling and screaming that he’d heard from Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom the last several weeks. He didn’t know who “Sandra” was, because that wasn’t his mother’s name. Her name was Annie.

He sat still now in the kitchen, gripping the edges of the tall chair where he always sat for his haircut.

“Mommy?”

His mother hummed a tune James did not recognize as she spread out a red dishtowel on the counter.

“What,” she said, not looking at him.

James considered not asking the question as his mother placed all her crafting shears on the dishtowel, like a surgeon before operating.

“Is Daddy still coming over today?”

“Mmm-hmm,” his mother said through lips pressed tightly together.

“Is he going to stay here tonight?” He hadn’t, not in weeks, and no one would tell James why.

Mommy did not answer.  She continued humming.

James squirmed in the chair. His nose itched, but the white zip ties around his wrists prevented him from scratching. He managed to rub his shoulder against the itch.

James looked down at his wrists. Mommy had never done this before.

“Mommy?”

She finished organizing the scissors on the dishtowel and brushed her hands as if to free them from dirt. “What.”

“How come I can’t move my arms?”

“You move around too much,” Mommy said. “You need to stay still.”

“I will. I’ll stay still.”

“No, you won’t.”

She walked out of the kitchen. James listened to her go in to the garage and open Daddy’s big red tool chest. He knew the sound well. Daddy always used the tool chest when fixing the car or doing some repair around the house. He always asked James to help, which James delighted in. He even knew the difference between a flat head and a Philips, which made Daddy so proud.

If he wasn’t going to stay tonight, who would fix the holes Mommy put into their bedroom walls with her feet and hands over the past few nights?

Mommy returned with a green nylon cargo strap. Before James could ask what that was for, she dropped a loop of it over his body so it ran across his chest. With a series of brass clicks, she tightened the strap so his body was held rigid against the back of the chair.

“Mommy?”

“What.”

“What are you doing?”

“I told you, you move around too much.”

“I won’t, I promise. This hurts.”

Mommy stopped answering. She went to the counter and picked up her heavy steel Fiskers scissors, the ones she used to cut cloth. The others she used for all sorts of crafts: pinking shears that made little triangle cuts. Detail scissors for snipping little bits off paper or cloth. Others.

“Where is the shaver?” James asked.

“We’re not shaving today.” She snipped the Fiskers in the air. The blades caught the overhead light and glittered. Snip snip!

She turned to face him.

“Daddy sure does love you, doesn’t he, James?”

He didn’t like the way she asked it. But, not wanting to upset her, he said, “Uh-huh.”

“He sure does,” Mommy went on and took a step closer. “Your hair is the same color as his, isn’t it, James?”

She gestured with the scissors. Snip snip.“Yeah,” James agreed. He didn’t like how his heart was beating so fast. It was very uncomfortable.

“And you have his chin. With the little dimple?”

Snip snip.

 “Uh-huh?”

“And of course, you have his pretty blue eyes.”

James shrank back as Mommy drew nearer. Mommy looked very, very different than usual. Even from when she was angry. She was smiling, but not like a good smile.

“Y-yes . . .” James whimpered.

“Yes,” Mommy repeated, now standing right in front of him. “You look just like Daddy.”

She raised the scissors.

“Let’s fix that.”

Snip snip.

 

THE END

 

Wow, that was messed up, I’m sorry. Not really, but sort of. Man. Well, if you enjoyed that, you might enjoy my horror novel Now You Don’t – a horror novel

You Will Play Until I Say You Stop

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A bit of doll horror to get your heart rate up…

It crept from the dollhouse on spiderlegs, too many joints, too many limbs.

Alexandra watched it first in fascination then with a growing dread that made her kidneys shrivel.

She’d named the doll Admordeo, a name which had merely slipped into her mind the moment the porcelain-cotton thing had been placed into her hands by her odd Aunt Chelsea. Aunt Chelsea, who favored the macabre in her dress, her entertainment, and her thought.

But Admordeo was a mouthful, just like Alexendra, so Alex started calling her Addie.

That had been yesterday. No — today. Earlier today.

Alex wanted to look at her green digital clock, but was afraid that if she took her eyes off the slowly crawling thing from the dollhouse, Addie would disappear, just like spiders always disappeared the very instant you went to get a swatter or shoe.

So Alex didn’t look away, though she intuited it was quite late. Too late to shout for Mom or Dad — they’d be so angry if she woke them again.

Addie, on her delicate hands and feet, crept closer still, her head up and bright black eyes staring at Alex. Some starlight filtered through Alex’s window, softened by sheer curtains, but she could see. Yes, she could see the doll’s eyes as black as sharks’ and the way Addie’s small mouth slowly began to grin.

“Stop,” Alex whispered.

The doll shot across the floor. It skittered, and Alex heard its little feet tittering across the floorboards like tiny wooden giggles.

Then the toy was up the quilt and racing toward Alex’s face. Addie’s grin grew wider, splitting her white face at the cheeks.

Alex inhaled for a scream — she’d risk waking up her parents — but the doll was faster. Alex felt its slight weight on her legs, her hips, her chest, and now her throat.

An inhuman hiss issued from the doll’s gaping maw, smelling briefly of garlic and old urine. It gagged the little girl, and then it was too late.

Addie the doll, her slender hands as sharp as tacks, tore into Alex’s open mouth. Alex instinctively bit down, and felt the wriggling and writhing of the doll’s arms like earthworms between her lips.

The toy hissed again, its features twisting into a mask of rage and hate. Alex coughed as blood ran down her throat and into her belly. This freed Admordeo to resume her attack with more ferocity. She tore the child’s tongue, bit her cheeks, scratched her face.

In mortal terror, Alex fought to push the wicked thing off her. Addie’s strength, she discovered, came from some other place, some magic from beyond this world that only a child could ever understand.

When Addie plunged her sharp hands into Alex’s eyes, the child was mercifully already gone.

THE END

Wow, what the hell was THAT? I dunno, but it creeped me out, and I guess that’s all that matters. If you dig haunted dolls and such, be sure to read my short novel Those We Bury Back. Excellent killer doll sequences! (That is an affiliate link, BTW.)

Happy Halloween… 🙂

It’s the Not-Knowing

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by Tom Leveen

© 2022

 

A hooded figure sat at Jack’s computer when he came down that morning. Jack, quite naturally, gasped, cursed, and stepped backward at the site of the hood, bathed in the blue light of the computer monitor on the desk before it.

 

“The hell?” Jack demanded, feeling his shoulders tense up and hands clench into fists. He licked his lips, wishing for a weapon. None were at hand. Jack worked at home and was a CPA who barely watched action movies, never mind owning anything that might defend life and limb.

 

“Get out of here!”

 

His voice was weak and cracked at the end, making Jack wince. Dammit.

 

“Go on!” he tried again. “Get!”

 

Like the ominous figure was a misbehaving puppy. Predictably, the words had no effect.

 

Jack glanced behind him at the open door. Obviously, the smart move here was to run, to go back to the kitchen where he’d left his iPhone charging, and call the police. They’d deal with the intruder just fine, by God they would!

 

Only . . .

 

They wouldn’t. Jack felt this truth like knives piercing his palms and feet, pinning him to this time and this place.

 

The room was dark except for the monitor, and it cast its light against the robe and hood in a way that made a black hole where a face should have been. The tip of a nose, the glint of an eye . . . something should have shown the figure to be human, but the blank space in the hood offered no such consolation.

 

So Jack figured it was Death.

 

It sat still. Motionless. No bony hands rested on the desktop, and no brimstone odor leaked from the folds of its black robe. Still—Jack felt deeply that his guess was right.

 

Death faced forward—well, “faced” being a relative term in this case—while Jack stood just a bit to the side, so that the figure wasn’t looking at him head-on. Instead it faced the screen. From his position by the door, Jack couldn’t see what might be on it, nor could he remember what he might have left up on the screen yesterday when his workday was done.

 

An Excel sheet? Some client’s bank statement? A video game he knew spent too much time on?

 

The light never flickered, so Jack assumed it was a static image. Perhaps just his desktop, with whatever quasi-inspiring image Bill Gates’ people had seen fit to push through that day.

 

“Look,” Jack said, again trying to moisten his lips. “I get it, okay? I know who you are. So, what now, do I get another chance? Is this just a warning? Look, I’ll eat more vegetables, okay? It’s not like I smoke. I don’t even drink a lot. So, come on. Another shot, huh?”

 

Death didn’t move.

 

“Well you don’t have to be a dick about it!” Jack shouted. “If we’re going to do this, then come on, do it! I’m . . . I’m ready!”

 

Lie. Total and utter. He wasn’t ready.

 

Death didn’t make a sound.

 

Jack gripped his short hair in hands. It felt melodramatic, but hell, life didn’t get more melodramatic than this.

 

“I’m talking to you! Answer me, say something! What? What do you want?”

 

While the figure made no movement, Jack heard a stealthy, slithering sound emanating from the dark folds of the robe. Cloth rubbing together, like arms shifting. But he could see no movement.

 

It occurred to Jack then to turn on the damn overhead light, but he hesitated, afraid of what the light might reveal. What if he then could see into the hood? What sort of Lovecraftian horror might be gazing back?

 

Jack released his hair and hugged his own body tightly, pounding his right fist against his chest. “Come on! Just do it, okay? You’re here for a reason, just get it over with!”

 

No response.

 

Jack shrieked. The madness of not knowing his fate grew like a geyser of India ink in his belly and torso, swirling black and heavy. He stamped his feet like a child.

 

“What are you waiting for? I’m here, I’m right here!”

 

Death offered no new sound, no motion.

 

The strain nipped at the edges of Jack’s sanity. In an ecstasy of tension, he gripped the sleeves of his shirt and tore them away. The old fabric whispered apart in his hands.

 

“What do you want from me? Huh? Are you the Ghost of Christmas Wasted or something? Speak!”

 

At that, the hooded figure slowly turned its head.

 

It was a slow, deliberate motion that obeyed all known laws of physics, yet at the same time, the gesture had an ethereal quality to it Jack could not pinpoint. The closest thing his addled mind could compare it to was the movement of a snake, which always disgusted him; they had no legs, how could they move? Here it was the same: the figure did not have a visible structure, no bone, muscle, sinew. How could it move?

 

Despite the movement, the darkness within the hood only appeared to grow thicker, revealing nothing. No pinprick ice-blue lights for eyes, no glimmering ivory fangs. Just darkness.

 

Jack raked his fingernails down his face and screamed. “What, what, what, what?”

 

He pulled thin layers of skin off, leaving burning tracks behind. It felt good, for a moment; felt good to feel, felt good to control, felt good to hurt. Pain meant he was still here.

 

So he did it again, and again. Bellowing rage at the dark figure, Jack fell to his knees and dug his fingers into his mouth. Pulled, hard, until the thin flesh gave way in a flood.

 

“What, what, what?”

 

By the time Jack stuffed his fingers into the soft skin below his eyes, he was well and truly insane. He tore his face to pieces until dead, lying prone against the thick-pile carpet in his office. It sucked eagerly at his blood.

 

The figure observed all this without a sound. When the deed was finally done, it rose gracefully from Jack’s leather chair. The robe fell neatly into place like drapery. It moved silently across the room and stepped easily over Jack’s mutilated body.

 

It was not Death, but Death’s assassin.

 

It was the not knowing that killed them.

 

THE END

Never Abandon the Blissful Value of Saying What Can’t Be Said

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MIXTAPE

by Tom Leveen

(c) 2022

 

A mixtape says the things you can’t. Or won’t.

Or sometimes: shouldn’t.

Mikey fretted over this daily as he sorted through song after song, classics and new hits, trying to compose his feelings with someone else’s music.

Some of it depended on his mood. Some days it was all AC/DC, which he knew Glorietta liked from back in the day. But this wasn’t the sort of situation where one could blithely record Highway to Hell onto the mix, even if it was one of her favorites. The title was just too . . . inappropriate.

He leavened today’s tape with some old R.E.M., thinking some of the lyrics of Driver 8 said a lot of what he wished to say: take a break, we’ve been on this trip too long.

He’d never say that to her. Even if he could muster up the courage and, hell, write the words down, they still wouldn’t come out right. He had way too much experience with that. Glorietta deserved his best.

Nirvana next? No, too abrasive. Poison? No, a power ballad didn’t work either, not today.

Checking the time—he did not want to be late, so as to maximize their time together—Mikey hurriedly chose some Midnight Oil, followed by U2. Classic stuff. Despite not the world’s biggest U2 fan, in his opinion, The Joshua Tree was one of the top great albums ever made.

Minutes ticked away as he painstakingly constructed the opus. He didn’t have a title for it yet; previous incarnations included A Fragile Flash of Lightning, riffing off Pink Floyd’s Delicate Sound of Thunder. Glorietta—she preferred “Glory”—had given him a brief laugh for that, which Mikey cherished. Last week he’d gone full metal-head, nothing but Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Metallica, Skid Row, Queensrÿche, Flotsam and Jetsam . . . and called it Wish You Were Hair, bemoaning that he’d lost his own long locks some time ago and still feeling pretty pouty and petty about it.

Petty! Of course.

Wildflowers became the last song on side B. Glory belonged among the wildflowers, most definitely.

Mikey hesitated as he scrawled the song title on the lined white insert. Did Wildflowers imply too much? That he, Mikey, should be her lover?

No, he decided. Most of the lyrics seemed very pointed at wishing the best for the other person. If that happened to come from a place of pure love and affection and . . . okay, fine, lust . . . Glory wouldn’t be any the wiser.

He hoped. God, the last thing she needed right now his sappy confession of love. No way, man.

Mikey snapped the cassette into its case and ran for his bike. If he pedaled hard, he’d get there just in time.

He got to the hospital one minute after Glory’s visiting hours began. A little breathless, he peeked into her room to see if she was awake.

She was. Barely. The TV was on. Family Ties.

“Hey,” Mikey whispered, still peering around the open door, not wanting to come in without Glory’s permission.

“Hey, you,” Glorietta said, and motioned with her fingers.

It was all the strength she had, and it was all the invitation Mikey needed. He slid into the room and went to the side of the wide bed, where he slipped the case into her hand.

“I, uh, I made . . . I made this . . . um . . . it’s, it’s a new—”

Even in her emaciated state, Glory’s smile lit his insides on fire.

“You know, Michael, one of these days . . .” She had to pause to take a breath. “You’re gonna have to bring a Walkman. Remember those?” Another pause. “Or you could just send me a Spotify list.”

He shook his head. “Not the same.”

“No,” Glory said. “It’s really not. You’re right.”

She lifted the tape to her face, squinting. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. Christ, Michael, you’re fifty-five years old, you better get on it.”

Glory smiled again as Mikey shuffled his feet. He wanted to say, “I did. I did find what I was looking for. Forty-five years ago when you moved in next door.”

But he couldn’t, and wouldn’t.

And, probably, oughtn’t.

All these years, nothing but friends. Through her various boyfriends, her first husband, her divorce, her second husband, him leaving her. Never having kids, career like a pinball in one of the old machines they used to play back in the neighborhood growing up. Then finally, this illness. He’d been the best friend he could. So he came every day with a new tape, and he’d keep coming until the inevitable end.

It was nearer than he cared to think about.

Glory gently put the cassette on a nearby table with several others Mikey’d brought over the past couple weeks. He almost helped her do it, her gesture was so weak. But he knew her stubbornness well. She would have given him a raft of shit for helping.

After the tape clattered mildly against the table top, Glory then stretched out her hand toward him.

“Michael.”

Perplexed, he took her hand. She was so cold.

“You don’t have to keep doing this.”

“Yeah, but, I . . . I mean, I do, I want to, I like to . . . unless you want me to stop.”

Glory shook her head weakly against the pillow. “No. Don’t do that. I’m just saying.” A pause. “You have a life. You don’t have to come if you don’t want.”

Mikey licked his lips, eyes darting. The words were right there, he could taste them in his mouth.

They wouldn’t come.

In a burst, Mikey snatched the new mixtape off the table and popped open the tiny radio-cassette player he’d brought on his first visit. He jammed the tape inside, slapped the tray shut, and pressed the play button.

Freddie Mercury said what he couldn’t. Mikey glanced at Glory, to see if she understood.

Glorietta pressed her lips together.

“Yeah,” she said quietly as the song played. “You’re mine, too.”

Mikey smiled, pulled a plastic molded chair to her bed, and sat down. Glory offered her hand again, and he took it.

She fell asleep an hour later in the middle of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. Mikey stayed by her side until visiting hours were over.

He’d come back tomorrow. Maybe with some Beastie Boys.

 

THE END

Horror: One for the Road, by Stephen King

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“It was quarter past ten and Herb Tooklander was thinking of closing for the night when the man in the fancy overcoat and the white, staring face burst into Tookey’s Bar, which lies in the northern part of Falmouth.” ~ Stephen King, “One For The Road,” from the collection Night Shift.

One of my all-time favorite short stories ever. I’m a fan of the entire canon of ‘Salem’s Lot, which includes this short story, the short story “Jerusalem’s Lot,” and of course the novel ‘Salem’s Lot. All are worth a read.

But Road really sticks with me, decades after the first time I read it.  Why?

First off, let’s start with King’s economy. If you’ve taken any of my classes or read any of my writing on writing, I talk about economy quite a bit. It’s not a word often attributed to King’s doorstoppers, but bear with me on this:

Notice how economically he starts the story: Never mind the “white, staring face” for the moment. The man, Lumley, didn’t just walk in, or amble, or prance – he burst in. It’s a small but important word. With one simple, relatively innocuous word, the night is off to an interesting start. Then our narrator, Booth, specifies the man is wearing a “fancy overcoat.” Booth doesn’t notice that he uses this phrase. Why? Because if you regularly wear a fancy overcoat, you don’t point out other people wearing them, which reveals something (or implies it) about Booth: he’s not a man who wears fancy overcoats, and probably has some ideas about people who do. So this one moment is the moment everything changes; there’s a hint of tension socially as well as physically (using the words “fancy” and “burst.”)

And not one word about vampires in that opening sentence. In fact, we won’t hear it until about halfway through the story. That’s economy. And I bet you anything King did not slave over those opening words. (Statistically, at that point in time, he may well have been high or hammered or both at the time, but hey.)

I also love the slow burn. I’m a fan of slow burns, provided the pacing is good — the two are not synonymous. Booth/King drops in phrases like these early on without elucidating:

~ “The lot. Oh my god.”

~ “I’ve got my bible on the shelf. You still wear yor Pope’s medal?”

~ “Everyone in town has something. Crucifix, St. Christopher’s medal…something.”

Long before Booth says anything about “vampires,” we’re sucked in. (HA! Sucked in! Get it? Sorry.) Phrases like these three trip our internal sensors. What’s “the lot?” Why are you talking about Bibles at a bar? Why does everyone in town have a crucifix? Without saying much, Booth/King has told us a lot, and we have to keep reading to find out more. What is not said is as frightening as what is not seen. Booth/King keeps the reader at arm’s length even though it’s first person; he forces us to take the role of Lumley because he won’t give us any details right away. The narrator isn’t unreliable — he just doesn’t say much, in a sense. Although Booth is telling us a story, he also keeps his own counsel about it. We won’t get anything from him until he’s good and ready to say it.

Then there’s setting. On its surface, the setting is trite: it’s a dark and stormy night, for heaven’s sake! But it works here, and it wouldn’t work any other way. It’s cold dread on a cold night. In the snow, we see a slumped form slithering away from the Jeep; a little girl standing on top of the snow instead of sinking into it doesn’t work without . . . well, snow. Lumley’s family must rely on his car heater to stay alive, so there is ample tension and motivation for him to ask these two old locals for help. The dark and stormy night works on a number of plot levels (and King never says “dark and stormy night,” people.)

“One for the Road” partially inspired Hellworld, by the way. The question, as they usually are, was simple: Could a ‘Salem’s Lot-type of place exist today? It was easy to create and maintain such a hamlet in the late ’70s when the story came out; that was before iPhones and Google Earth. Sure, there are places like the forest we see in movies like The Blair Witch Project, but seriously, how hard do you have to try to get eaten by vampires these days? Pretty hard, I think. Not that a cell phone can save you from hungry nosferatu, but are there any surprises out there in the world for us anymore? I’m not sure. So I set out to see if I could find that place. Find it I did: Desert caves. Nothing good happens in there, friends.

“One for the Road” can be found in King’s collection Night Shift, and is also a not-too-bad little short film available on IMDB.com. Check it out!